Arc Raiders and The Finals Are Getting Movies and TV Shows as Nexon Hands Chernin Entertainment the Keys

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-05

Hollywood has found its next video game targets, and they are both from the same Swedish studio. Nexon and Embark Studios have set up film and TV adaptations of Arc Raiders and The Finals with Chernin Entertainment, according to Variety's Monday report, and GameSpot's own post confirmed the pairing as official. Chernin was picked from several production companies and studios competing for the rights, and it is now the lead producer on both the series and the movies. There is no cast, no director, no writer, no format and no release window attached to any of it. What exists today is a signed partner and a press release full of the word franchise.

Official ARC Raiders screenshot from the Steam store page showing the game world

What Nexon and Embark Actually Announced

The deal covers both games and both screens, meaning Chernin will develop television series and feature films for each property rather than one flagship adaptation. Embark founder and CEO Patrick Soderlund, who is also Nexon's executive chairman, called the agreement the next step in growing the games into deeply integrated transmedia experiences for the player community. Chernin's film president David Ready said the company wants to unite its film and television teams to tell stories set in these worlds, and he described both games as ambitious global IP with franchise potential. Embark says its creative team will work closely with Chernin so the adaptations stay faithful to what made the games land. That is standard press release language, and I would not read anything into it until a script exists.

The numbers Nexon attached to the announcement are the real pitch. Variety reports that Arc Raiders has sold more than 16 million copies since launching in October 2025, and that it took best multiplayer game at the 2025 Game Awards, online game of the year at the 29th D.I.C.E. Awards and best multiplayer at the 2026 BAFTA Games Awards. The Finals, a free-to-play shooter staged as a virtual combat game show, has registered more than 30 million players in three years. Both are on Steam under Embark Studios, which is how a studio founded only a few years ago ended up with two licensable properties in the same room as Hollywood producers.

Who Is Chernin Entertainment

Chernin is the film and TV division of The North Road Company, and its recent work gives the deal some weight. On the film side Variety lists Backrooms, which grossed over $400 million worldwide on a $10 million budget, and Netflix's The Last House. On television the company has Apple TV's Chief of War, Truth Be Told and See, plus Netflix's The Madness and Man on Fire. Notice what that list does not contain: a long track record of adapting video games. Backrooms is the closest cousin, an internet-born horror property turned into a hit, and it is clearly the comparison Nexon wants people to make.

Official THE FINALS screenshot from the Steam store page showing a destructible arena

The Timing Is Interesting

The announcement lands two days before Frozen Trail, which Variety calls the largest Arc Raiders content update to date, arriving Wednesday, October 7. The Finals Season 12 follows on October 20. IGN Brasil's write-up adds that Arc Raiders was one of the biggest games of 2025 but has lost some steam in recent months because of a lack of regular, substantial content, and that Embark plans to test a PvE mode later this month, with no promise it becomes permanent. Read together, the picture is a studio with a huge hit that needs to keep its audience engaged while the corporate side builds the franchise machine around it. A TV series announcement is a nice headline, but it does not fix a content drought, and players are going to judge Embark on Frozen Trail first.

How the Community Is Taking It

Reaction is limited so far, and I will not pretend there is a consensus. Under GameSpot's post the replies are a small, split sample: one account called it a serious expansion of the universe, another joked about announcing a live-action adaptation before the extraction shooter has even built server queues, and a couple were pure trolling. That is a handful of replies, not a verdict. The more useful signal will come when Embark says something about tone, because the thing fans actually love about Arc Raiders is the tension of scavenging a ruined Earth while machines and other players hunt you. If a movie sands that down into a generic robot invasion, the goodwill goes fast.

Second official ARC Raiders screenshot from the Steam store page

The CriticalPixel Take

My honest read is that this is a smart business move wrapped in a very early announcement. Studios sign adaptation deals the moment a game is hot because the leverage disappears the moment it cools, and Arc Raiders at 16 million copies is hotter than it will ever be again. But a producer attached with no writer is a promise to start working, and plenty of game adaptations die in that gap for years. The Finals is arguably the easier sell on screen, since a deadly game show in destructible arenas is already a TV format, while Arc Raiders has the better world but almost no characters or plot to adapt. Whoever writes the first script has to invent the people before anyone can care about them, and that is where most of these projects stall.

What I want to see next is a named showrunner or director and a clear statement on whether Embark has real creative control or just a consultant seat. Nexon's language says the teams will work closely together, which can mean anything from a writers' room credit to a courtesy phone call. Until that gets answered, treat this as a branding exercise with a real producer attached, not as a TV show or a movie you can plan around. For now the best thing Embark can do for the franchise is ship a Frozen Trail update that gives players a reason to keep logging in, because no adaptation will matter if the base game's momentum keeps sagging. We will cover the first casting or creative announcement the moment it drops.